過於玄乎的人類技術焦慮症

I’m writing these words in York, the city in which, two centuries ago, the British justice system meted out harsh punishments — including execution — to men found guilty of participating in Luddite attacks on spinning and weaving machines. By a curious coincidence, I’ve just read Walter Isaacson’s article in the FT explaining how wrong-headed the Luddites were. I’m not so sure.

這篇文章是我在約克寫下的。兩個世紀以前，在這座城市，英國司法系統對搗毀紡紗機和編織機的盧德分子（盧德(Luddite)是19世紀初搗毀機器的英國手工業者——譯者注）處以嚴厲懲罰——包括極刑。因爲一個奇怪的巧合，我剛剛閱讀了沃爾特•艾薩克森(Walter Isaacson)在英國《金融時報》上發表的文章，他在文中解釋了盧德分子的觀念如何錯誤。我對此不是很肯定。

“Back then, some believed technology would create unemployment,” writes Isaacson. “They were wrong.”

“當時，一些人認爲技術會造成失業，”艾薩克森寫道，“他們錯了。”

No doubt such befuddled people did exist, and they still do today. But this is a straw man: we can all see, as Isaacson does, that technology has made us richer while employment is as high as ever. (The least appreciated job-creating invention may well have been the washing machine, which helped turn housewives into women with salaries.)

毫無疑問，當時確實存在這樣的糊塗人，今天也一樣。但這是顯而易見的：就像艾薩克森那樣，我們都能看到，技術讓我們更富有，同時就業也保持在高水平。（在創造就業的發明中，洗衣機大概是最未受賞識的一項，它使家庭主婦能夠成爲領薪水的職業女性。）

The Luddites themselves had a more subtle view than Isaacson suggests, and one which is as relevant as ever. They believed that the machines were altering economic power in the textile industry, favouring factory owners and low-skilled labourers at the expense of skilled craftsmen. They wanted to defend their interests and they did so violently. As the historian Eric Hobsbawm put it, their frame-breaking activity was “collective bargaining by riot” and “simply a technique of trade unionism” in the days before formal unions existed.

盧德分子的觀點比艾薩克森描述的更加細膩，也一如既往地相關。他們相信，機器改變了紡織業的經濟實力格局，讓工廠主和低技能勞動者受益，犧牲了技術熟練的手工藝人。他們想要捍衛自己的利益，併爲此採取了暴力的方式。就如歷史學家埃裏克•霍布斯鮑姆(Eric Hobsbawm)所說的，他們打破既定模式的行動相當於“通過暴亂形式進行的集體談判”，相當於正式公會出現之前的“工會主義手法”。

To put it another way, the Luddites weren’t idiots who thought that machines would destroy jobs in general; they were skilled workers who thought that machines would devalue their specific jobs and their specific skills. They were right about that, and sufficiently determined that stopping them required more than 10,000 troops at a time when the British army might have preferred to focus on Napoleon.

換言之盧德分子並不是認爲機器會從總體上破壞就業的傻子；他們是一羣技術熟練工，認爲機器會使他們的特定工作和技能貶值。在這一點上，他們是對的，而且擁有足夠強大的決心，以至於在應該全力與拿破崙戰鬥的時期，英國調派了超過1萬陸軍兵力阻止這些盧德分子。

The Luddite anxiety has been dormant for many years but has recently enjoyed a resurgence. This is partly because journalists fear for their own jobs. Technological change has hit us in several ways — by moving attention online, where (so far) it is harder to charge money for subscriptions or advertising; by empowering unpaid writers to reach a large audience through blogging; and even by introducing robo-hacks, algorithms that can and do extract data from corporate reports and turn them into financial journalism written in plain(ish) English. No wonder human journalists have started writing about the economic damage the robots may wreak.

多年以來，勒德派的焦慮一直蟄伏着，但最近這種焦慮捲土重來。部分原因是記者們擔心自己的工作。技術變革以好幾種方式衝擊着我們——把人們的注意力移至線上，加大了（到目前爲止）對訂閱收費或者銷售廣告的難度；讓無薪的作者通過博客接觸到大批讀者；甚至還有機器人寫手——用算法從公司報告中萃取數據，轉化成用（基本上）直白的英語撰寫的財經新聞。難怪記者們已開始撰寫關於機器人可能造成經濟損害的報道。

Another reason for the robo-panic is concern about the economic situation in general. Bored of blaming bankers, we blame robots too, and not entirely without reason. Inequality has risen sharply over the past 30 years. Many economists believe that this is partly because technological change has favoured a few highly skilled workers (and perhaps also more mundane trades such as cleaning) at the expense of the middle classes.

機器人恐慌情緒的另一個原因是對整體經濟形勢的擔憂。我們厭倦了責怪銀行家，現在我們也責怪機器人，而且並非全無道理。過去30年間，不平等程度急劇上升。許多經濟學家認爲，部分原因是技術變革偏袒少數高技能員工（可能也有利於某些比較平凡的職業，比如清潔工作），而犧牲了中產階級的利益。

Finally, there is the observation that computers continue to develop at an exponential pace and are starting to make inroads in hitherto unexpected places — witness the self-driving car, voice-activated personal assistants and automated language translation. It is a long way from the spinning jenny to Siri.

最後，人們也注意到計算機持續以指數級速度發展，開始進入此前意想不到的領域——自動駕駛汽車、聲控個人助理和自動語言翻譯就是例證。從珍妮紡紗機到Siri，科技取得了長足進展。

What are we to make of all this? One view is that this is business as usual. We’ve had dramatic technological change for the past 300 years but it’s fine: we adapt, we still have jobs, we are incomparably richer — and the big headache of modernity isn’t unemployment but climate change.

我們該從這一切得出什麼結論？一個觀點是：這是一種常態。過去300年來我們經歷了巨大的技術變革，沒出什麼問題：我們適應了，我們依然有工作，還比以前富有得多——現代世界的大問題並不是失業，而是氣候變化。

A second view is that this time is radically different: the robots will, before long, render many people economically valueless — simply incapable of earning a living wage in a market economy. There will be plenty of money around but it will flow to the owners of the machines, and maybe also to the government through taxation. In principle, all could be well in such a future but it would require a radical reimagining of how an economy could work. The state, not the market, would be the arbiter of who gets what. Such a world is probably not imminent but, by 2050, who knows?

第二種觀點是，這一次是截然不同的：不久以後，機器人會使許多人失去經濟價值——無法在市場經濟中掙到足以維生的工資。會有大量資金流通，但這些財富會流向機器的所有者，或者同時通過徵稅流向政府。原則上，在這樣的未來情形中，一切都可能很好，但這需要人們對經濟運行體制徹底轉變想法。國家，而不是市場，將成爲決定誰得到什麼的裁決者。這樣的世界或許不會很快到來，但是，誰知道到了2050年會怎樣呢？

 . . . 

. . .

The third perspective is what we might call the neo-Luddite view: that technology may not destroy jobs in aggregate but rather changes the demand for skills in ways that are real and troubling. Median incomes in the US have been stagnant for decades. There are many explanations for that, including globalisation and the decline of collective bargaining, but technological change is foremost among them.

第三種觀點可以被稱爲新盧德派觀點：技術可能不會在總量上消除工作崗位，但技術造成的技能需求變化將是真實存在且令人不安的。數十年來美國的中值收入一直原地踏步。對此有很多種解釋，包括全球化以及集體談判的衰落，但技術變革是最重要的一種解釋。

If the neo-Luddites are right, then the challenge in front of us is simply to adapt. Individual workers, companies and the political system will have to deal with wrenching economic changes as old industries are destroyed and new ones created. That seems a plausible view of the near future.

如果新盧德派是對的，那麼我們面前的挑戰就是去適應它。員工個人、企業和政治體制需要應對痛苦的經濟變化，舊的行業被淘汰，新的行業應運而生。這似乎是對近期未來的一種可信看法。

But there is a final perspective that doesn’t get as much attention as it might: it’s that technological change is too slow, not too fast. The robo-booster theory implies a short-term surge in jobs, as all those lovely new machines are designed and built and installed, followed by a long-term surge in productivity as the robots make the economy ruthlessly efficient. It is hard to see much sign of either trend in the economic statistics. Productivity, in particular, has been disappointing in the US and utterly dismal in the UK. Where are the robots when we need them?

但還有最後一種觀點似乎沒有得到太多的關注：那就是技術變革太慢，而非太快。機器人助推器理論暗示，由於機器需要人工進行設計、製造和安裝，就業會在短期內激增，此後長期生產率大幅提高，機器人讓經濟效率高得無情。目前我們還很難從經濟統計中看到上述趨勢的跡象。尤其是，近年美國的生產率令人失望，而英國更是糟糕透頂。當我們需要機器人的時候，它們在哪？

Tim Harford is the author of ‘The Undercover Economist Strikes Back’.

本文作者蒂姆•哈福德(Tim Harford)著有《臥底經濟學家反擊戰》(The Undercover Economist Strikes Back)